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Heather Tetmyer and Gabrielle Palermo knew that daycare centers and preschools did more than just hand out crayons and juice boxes to keep kids busy when they launched their own early child learning center in Gibsonia six years ago.

But the North Hills women, who are both educators, think daycare centers and preschools should not only be safe and nurturing, they should start kids on an early path to becoming critical thinkers.

When they realized the kind of daycare center they imagined didn’t exist in the North Hills, they decided to start their own — STEMSteps Early Learning, a nonprofit preschool that accepts children from birth through kindergarten and starting this fall, first grade.

“There were a ton of daycare centers in the North Hills,” said Tetmyer, 37, of Ross.“But I wanted something different for my daughter, something that was education-focused and hands-on. I was kind of surprised that there wasn’t anything like that around.”

Tetmyer is a graduate of Pine-Richland High School and Clarion University, where she majored in elementary education. She taught grade school in Phoenix, Ariz., where she also earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction.

Before returning to the area in 2013, Tetmyer worked in the College of Education at Grand Canyon University.

She said her idea for a STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — focused daycare and preschool began to percolate while working as an instructor at Community College of Allegheny County after moving back.

“I noticed a trend among freshman students where everybody wanted the answer,” she said. “It was as if their critical thinking skills were non-existent because for so long, we’ve been ‘teaching to the test’ in our school. As a teacher, I felt that a lot of the creativity had been taken out of teaching.”

Tetmyer said the “missing pieces” at the daycare centers she visited were the STEM concepts already being used in Arizona schools.

She said STEM-centered education not only provide children with information, it teaches them to use core concepts of being “flexible, persistent, collaborative and creative.”

“The idea of completely connected learning was something that was missing from all the daycare centers and preschools I visited,” she said.

Palermo, who has been close friends with Tetmyer since the worked as cashiers together at King’s restaurant when they were teenagers, also saw a gap in what was being offered at daycare centers and preschools at the time.

The Mars High School graduate, who lives in McCandless, earned a degree in criminology and a master’s in teaching from the University of Pittsburgh and is a licensed behavior specialist.

She joined forces with Tetmyer to open STEMsteps in 2015 after visiting numerous daycares and schools and observing what she calls a “huge, huge deficiency in a student’s ability to problem-solve and process information.”

“Part of my job as a behavioral specialist was to travel to daycare centers and schools,” said Palermo, 36. “What I began to notice was that many of the kids who were having difficulties really seemed to lack any sort of excitement for what they were learning.

“So many of the kids had already lost their sense of wonder by the time they reached second or third grade,” she said. “I feel that if a child loses interest in learning at such an early age, it could be lost forever.”

Palermo said discussions with Tetmyer about the state of preschool programs available in the area usually turned to the need to integrate STEM concepts into the program at an early age.

“Heather lived on the west coast where STEM was already in the grade schools while in most of Pennsylvania it was only just being introduced at the high school level and a bit in middle school,” Palermo. “So we decided to incorporate STEM into all the activities our children do from infancy on up.”

The partners attended an entrepreneur program at Duquesne University to develop the skills they needed to run a business, borrowed money from family members and opened with seven children in a former daycare center they rent in the lower level of Cross Roads Presbyterian Church on Wexford Road.

Tetmyer and Palermo were the only employees when the education center launched and they now have 68 children from 51 families and lead a faculty of 14, with plans to expand.

The scheduled launch of first-grade class this fall grew out of a desire among parents to continue their child’s connection with STEMsteps, Tetmyer said.

All the necessary paperwork to open the school has been submitted to the state Department of Education and the school is in the midst of a fundraising drive to help fund the new facility.

Hilary Walczak enrolled her sons Charlie, 5, and Oliver, 3, in STEMsteps after moving from Bellevue to Cranberry last year.

After speaking to Palermo and Tetmyer, she and her husband immediately knew it was “perfect” for their children.

“We love the idea that everything is hands-on,” Walczak said. “The kids don’t even realize that they are learning.”

She said the preschool’s approach helps fuel a child’s curiosity for learning.

“Our kids are part of what I call the touch generation, when they learn about something they want to see it and feel it,” Walczak said.

She also likes the preschool’s use of technology such as computers and tablets as well its “farm to school” philosophy.

“Charlie is already reading second-grade level chapter books in kindergarten,” she said. “Until I saw what they were doing at his preschool, I didn’t recognize how good the education could be.”

Walczak said she plans to send both children to the new STEMsteps grade school being developed.

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